Saturday, February 16, 2008

Saturday 02/16 (Very) Quickie

Pats sued by ex-Rams player, fans: You can scoff and dismiss this if you want, but you know you're kind of curious what might come out in a real-live deposition of a Federal civil suit. Because you KNOW that something is there to come out...

NBA Rookie Game: Sophs roll. Boobie Gibson went absolutely nuts with 11 3-pointers. 11! (11!) Rudy Gay (my pre-game pick for MVP) had 22 (if not for Gibson...). Brandon Roy had 17 and Jordan Farmar had a break-out game with 17 of his own, setting the Rookie-Soph Game record for points by a Jewish player.

(For the Rookies, Kevin Durant had 23, but Al Horford had 19 -- a nice symbol of the way Horford has made a once-presumptive Rookie of the Year race an actual competition.)

By the way, I have had an HDTV for 2 months, and my favorite HD moment so far was last night: The players' garishly colored sneakers were absolutely amazing-looking. (Oh, and I could pick out my college roommate sitting behind the Sophs' bench -- he's a Hornets team doc. I was able to text him, then actually watch him reacting to my text on TV. Hilarious.)

College GameDay at Indiana: Can you say "AWK-ward!" Self-respecting IU fans should chant "Fire! Samp-son!" (clap-clap-clapclapclap...) The IU AD has a week to figure out what's going on (honestly, if I was the IU president, I would fire both Sampson AND the AD, if only for letting Sampson get this far).

CBB: Marquette rolls. In a rare Friday night game, between two Top 25 teams no less, Marquette thumped Pitt. 'Quette is clawing its way back to respectability.

Hoops Hall of Fame finalists named: Olajuwon and Ewing should be locks as players; Riley should be a lock as a coach.

Fun barstool/cubicle question: Where do Hakeem and Ew rank among all-time centers (or even players?) I have always argued that Hakeem in '94 and '95 was as dominant as they come (in the ESPN Era, at least).

One of my favorite (and widely scorned) theories is that Hakeem's Rockets could have beaten a 1994 Bulls WITH Jordan...and, given the roll that the Rockets were on in '95, they could have beaten the '95 Bulls with Jordan, too.

Oh, and happy birthday to me. See my bonus post from yesterday for more.

Of course you do. I wouldn't expect anything less. Although you have to know by now that I think you are absolutely crazy.

It's obvious there is no way this dispute could ever be resolved. The 2 closest things to compare are the 93 and 94 Knicks and the 95 96 Orlando Magic team.

The Rockets beat the 94 Knicks in 7 games actually being outscored in the series by 4 points and the average scoring margin in their wins was 4.75 points. The Bulls beat the 93 Knicks in 6 games outscoring them by 28 points with the average scoring margin in their wins being 10.25.

The Rockets swept the 95 Magic and outscored them by 38 points. In the 96 conference finals the Bulls swept the basically same Magic team by a total of 67 points winning the first game by 38 points. Granted that probably would not have been the same Bulls team if Jordan had never left.

The fact is at that time in his career Jordan was simply not losing. Besides being the most skillfully dominating player in the ESPN era, his will and determination would not let him lose.

Although a main reason he left the game was because his desire had faded. So maybe, and just maybe, a Hakeem team could have beaten a half-ass Jordan team. But if his desire never faded and the debacle of trying baseball never happened, no way the Rockets beat the Bulls.

This is an endless debate and we'll never know, but it seems unlikely to me the Bulls would have lost. I think you did an exceptional job this week Dan. You certainly got me fired up on numerous occasions.

Videotaping was not illegal, was it? I mean, in real civil law setting. It may have been against the rules of the NFL. But aside from that, it's an in-house matter. Does Congress have any jurisdiction to tell people how to run their businesses?

Oh, and happy birthday Dan. I believe this demographic goes from 35 to 54, so you'll be there a while.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.